The present disclosure generally relates to virtual or augmented reality systems, and more specifically relates to an illumination source assembly including one or more emitters and one or more fold elements in a depth camera assembly configured to determine one or more depth information of a local area.
Virtual reality (VR) systems or augmented reality (AR) systems (generically categorized under Mixed Reality (MR)), can leverage the capture of the environment surrounding a user in three dimensions (3D). This is captured traditionally through depth camera imaging architectures, and examples herein for obtaining 3D information of a scene include e.g., stereo vision, time-of-flight (ToF) and structured light (SL). Different depth camera imaging architectures provide different strengths and weaknesses, so certain depth camera imaging architectures may provide better performance than others in different operating conditions. For instance, stereo vision architectures operate well with ambient illumination, while ToF architectures have an active illumination source which may be impaired by limitations in signal-to-noise ratio from ambient illumination. However, because of the relatively large size of conventional depth camera imaging architectures, many systems including a depth camera typically use a single type of depth camera imaging architecture configured for a particular use case. As head-mounted and other MR systems are increasingly used to perform a broader range of functions in varied operating conditions and environments, selecting a depth camera imaging architecture to obtain more complete or robust depth information of a local area surrounding the system and the user may use more capability and flexibility within the same volume and weight limitations otherwise imposed.